Monopoly and the War Effort

Knowing I'm a big fan of all-things-board-games, Greg sent me the the link to this article figuring I'd find it interesting…which I did.

I'll let you read the article because they do the story better justice than I can in a quick blurb, but I'll give a high level summary. Basically, during WWII, care packages were sent to English prisoners of war. Inside these care packages, there were occasionally sent copies of board games such as the ever-popular (?) Monopoly.

Unbeknownst to the German guards/etc, these copies of Monopoly had been modified to include maps, compasses, and other tools to help the prisoners escape from the camp. All copies of these smuggled games have since been destroyed (which is a bummer, I would love to have seen one, but for security reasons, it makes sense) but the idea is that they had the maps and other items hidden inside the gameboard itself under small cutouts and identified via special marks on the board and the box to help identify the items that the games contained.

In reading the article, it sounded like something out of Hogan's Heroes or 'Allo 'Allo rather than something that really happened.